1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to the problem of concurrent wireless communication with multiple communication partners of different wireless communication protocols.
2. Background Information
Advances in microprocessor and communication technology have led to the increase in popularity of wireless communication. Once confined to the privileged, wireless voice communication have become affordable and available to the masses. Today, various efforts are under way to apply wireless communication to replace attachment cables used for attaching peripheral devices, such as printers, scanners and the like, as well as networking cables used for connecting clients, servers and the like. A leading candidate to accomplish the former is commonly known to those skilled in the art as the Bluetooth technology or Bluetooth protocol. Examples of technology to accomplish the later include the different variants of the IEEE 802.11 Standard published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, 802.11 (Frequency Hoping, Direct Sequence), 802.11a, 802.1b, as well as Home RF, also known as Shared Wireless Access Protocol (SWAP) to those skilled in the art.
A need has emerged in a number of applications that it is desirable for a device to be able to operate xe2x80x9cconcurrentlyxe2x80x9d in multiple wireless protocols. One such applications is having a notebook computer being able to communicate with peripheral devices such as a phone, a printer, a scanner and the like, in accordance with the Bluetooth protocol; and with other computing devices, such as other peer computers or servers, communication devices, such as modems or adapters, and networking devices, such as gateways, routers, switches and the like, in accordance with one of the 802.11 protocols or Home RF.
However, the need cannot be met by simply providing the device with multiple transmitters, one for each protocol. The reason is because if multiple ones of these transmitters were to transmit at the same time. The transmitters are going to interfere with each other, resulting in corruption and/or loss of data, as well as degradation in performance.
As will be described in more detail below, the present invention substantially address this need in a very efficient and low cost manner. This and other advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent from the description to follow.
A wireless device is provided with at least one wireless transceiver and at least one controller manager to transmit and receive signals wirelessly to and from network devices of a first and a second wireless network, in a coordinated manner, in accordance with a first and a second protocol respectively. The wireless device is further provided with a network manager to coordinate the network devices of the first and second wireless networks to reduce interference between the network devices of the two wireless networks.
In one embodiment, the coordination includes selection of network devices of either the first or the second network as dominant devices that operationally dominate network devices of the other network. The coordination further includes notifying the dominated devices, from time to time, to temporarily suspend operation, to proactively avoid frequency interference with the dominant devices.
In an alternate embodiment, the coordination includes notifying the network devices of filtering to be employed by the network devices to resolve interference, and from time to time, to apply the filtering to resolve interference.